Brooklyn Hummus Maker Loses Employment Wage Suit

Story first appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

A kosher-food manufacturer in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has reached a $577,000 settlement with 20 of its formers workers, ending a more than four-year battle that cost it numerous big-name customers.

Flaum Appetizing Corp., best known for its hummus, will pay the mostly Mexican immigrants back wages and compensation, resolving National Labor Relations Board litigation and a federal lawsuit filed in Manhattan.

An executive director of the advocacy group Brandworkers said that the litigation focused on unpaid overtime, and a lack of respect from management. The employees were forced to work 70 to 80 hours a week and were subjected to verbal abuse which was very egregious.

Flaum does not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement, and the owner states that he is happy to put the litigation behind.

And though business went down initially when Tnuva, a kosher dairy company, dropped Flaum as its distributor last year, it picked up when Flaum found another cheese company to partner with.

A co-founder of Uri L'Tzedek, a New York City-based Orthodox Jewish social-advocacy group, said the group worked to persuade businesses to stop buying Flaum's products. More than 120 businesses stopped selling Flaum's products at one time or another.

Each worker is expected to get between $7,000 and $50,000. None intend to return to Flaum, Binghamton Labor and Employment Lawyers said.


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